Taking Design to the Desktop

Taking Design to the Desktop

How many of us use a background on our desktops? I think if I were to post a poll about it, I would get at least 95% of people saying ‘yes’. But what is it most of us see when you look at the same familiar screen 2 thousand times a day? A good looking woman, a sports car, or a tranquil scene of some fish floating around on a reef somewhere exotic is a good place to start when you try to envision other people’s monitors because the majority of people never stray further past the default wallpapers Microsoft ships with windows.

A few create their own wallpapers or use programs such as Microsoft PLUS to extend their desktop capabilities, when in fact there is a really cool way of using the desktop which was introduced back in Windows 98 which not a lot of people know about or care to use if they do.

That forgotten feature is the ability to use web documents on the desktop. And the fun doesn’t stop there. Not only does it support HTML, but if you use a page from the web then the options are quite open for what you can view.

Locally (using files off your own machine) you can use HTML, CSS & Flash documents.

Remotely, I haven’t tested it with all file types but I have ASP & PHP pages displayed with ease, so I’m assuming CFM pages etc. should run ok. If not you always have your trusty browser to rely on ;)

Note: I have not tried to view dynamic pages locally as I see no need to view my own pages in that way, so it may be entirely possible to view asp, php pages etc.. locally. I just haven’t tested that possibility.

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Overview

So where does design come into this?

Well there are a couple of ways you can use the feature of desktop HTML, all of which will be covered in this article.

1.                   Linking web documents to display in I-Frames on the desktop.

2.                   Creating your own HTML / Flash document

3.                   Combining both of the above.

One issue to address before you choose which option to use is whether you are going to be displaying your desktop icons or not. I prefer to ‘hide’ mine and just have my HTML document displayed, as the icons are covered as links in my document anyway.

Let’s look at a few examples of the desktop styles. We’ll start with #1 - Linking web based documents in I-Frames.

Option 1: Linking web documents to display in I-Frames on the desktop.

Dave Thomas

Dave ThomasPart Time developer, as my main job is a bricklayer.

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